About Us
The Basics
- In business since January of 2000
- Located in North Huntingdon, PA (near Pittsburgh)
- 14 Full Time employees, 3 part time employees, lots of seasonal employees
|
What makes us special?
- We try harder. Being average is not acceptable to any of
our employees
- We treat our customers the way we would want to be
treated.
- Unmatched quality control. We inspect every single one of our
t-shirts for flaws. No one else does that.
|

Front Row (from left to right):
Brianne,
Brian (Doc), Lee
Back Row: Brady,
Michael,
Brian M,
Jaime G,
Deanna,
Christine,
Dyan,
Mic,
Jaime M,
Kevin
Not pictured: Mary Ellen, Sue,
Kim R (offsite), Jason G (offsite)
About the Founder
The history of 80sTees.com used to begin with the summer of 1999. But
then we had the idea of getting pictures of our employees playing with an
80s toy when they were a kid (if they were kids in the 80s!). As our
founder was looking through pictures at his parents house he realized that
he was always wearing printed shirts! And to top that off his mom even
made him a birthday cake with an outline of a t-shirt on it when he was a
kid. He has always loved t-shirts! Here are some pictures
showing our founder, Kevin Stecko, wearing some original 80sTees.

The business idea started in the summer of 1999. Kevin Stecko, the
company founder, wore a
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe t-shirt to
Kennywood, a Pittsburgh amusement park.
Throughout the day many people approached Kevin and asked “where did you get
that shirt?”.
Upon graduation Kevin had a few weeks to kill before starting his new job for
an environmental consulting firm, so he made a deal to bulk purchase some retro
shirts from the small store in State College, PA, where he bought his original
shirt. He began by selling
Transformers,
ThunderCats,
Care Bears, and
Strawberry ShortCake t-shirts on Ebay. After the first
He-Man shirt sold
for over $30.00, he knew he had stumbled onto something that people wanted to
buy!
He then began selling shirts at http://www.80sTees.com, but originally
only accepted personal checks and money orders. Our first electronic payment
method was PayPal, which allows individuals to send money via credit card.
PayPal is very popular among Ebay users, but was an inconvenience for those
people not already a member. We now accept all major credit cards, PayPal,
and check/money orders.
In 2003, we upgraded our site and added features such as a
gift certificates, coupons, and a
site wide search engine. In January of 2005 we added an industry leading
site search and navigation tool. You can now shop our site and see
only the items that match your profile. You can search based on your
gender, size, your favorite characters, or even how recently we added the items!
As of February 16th, 2006 we've launched our redesigned site. Our
redesign is just the beginning of continuous improvements we will make to the
site to make it easier for our users.
Where do you get those wonderful shirts?
Just as the joker wondered where Batman gets all his wonderful toys,
many people also wonder where we get our t-shirts.
80sTees does not own the rights to the characters/licenses of the characters we
sell. Rather, we buy the shirts wholesale from the license holders.
For instance, we buy our
Star Wars shirts from a company that has an agreement with George Lucas.
The company we buy from pays George Lucas a royalty for every shirt they sell to
us.
Providing a License to Wear
We do have a few license agreements that allow us to produce our own t-shirts.
That is why our selection of
Top Gun t-shirts is the best on the web. As we grow we will try to add
even more licenses so that we can continue to offer the best selection of
licensed t-shirts on the web. 80sTees in the media
It's likely that you have seen one of our many print
advertisements in magazines such as Maxim, US Weekly, Rolling Stone, In
Touch, etc. Our shirts have been featured in the following TV shows
and movies:
- Everybody Loves Raymond (Batman shirt worn by Chris Elliot)
- Blade: Trinity (Lost Boys shirt worn by punk kid who attacks
Jessica Biel)
- Good Morning America Valentines Day (Joel Siegel gave a
Jake Ryan shirt to a
weekend anchor for a Valentine's Day segment on romantic movies)
- Stacy Keibler requested our shirts for a photo shoot for Sole
Collector magazine. At the time Stacy was known for being a WWE wrestler,
but now she has shot to fame with her success on the ABC show
Dancing with the Stars. She appeared in a
Rainbow Brite shirts
and
Jem and the
Holograms shirts.
- MTV2 VJ Jim Shearer has requested and worn 80sTees' shirts
- Wild Hogs: Tim Allen's character wore our
Who Made Who AC/DC t-shirt
About the President
Kevin Stecko was born in 1977, and grew up with practically all the
characters and titles we sell. He graduated in 1999 from Penn State University
with a Bachelor of Science in Geo-Environmental Engineering.
Kevin, why sell 80's shirts?
My favorite toys of the 80s were, by far, the Masters of the Universe
collection. One day at Penn State I walked by a little shop and saw a
He-Man t-shirt.
Amazing! I bought the shirt and immediately it was my favorite t-shirt.
When I would wear the shirt at any kind of public place people would always ask
me where I bought it. So I decided that these shirts obviously were not
easy enough to find, and I changed that by creating 80sTees.com.
You will notice that we have lots of non-80s shirts as well. We have
evolved our product line to include some of our favorite pop-culture items, even
if they aren't from the 80s! We are big fans of
The Office and
Family Guy, and some older stuff
like
Sanford
and Son and
MASH.
|